A team of researchers from the UK's University College London (UCL) and New York's Stony Brook University have discovered the 70 million-year-old fossil of a massive dinosaur-eating frog in Madagascar. The scientists have named the frog Beelzebufo, meaning "the frog from hell."

The frog weighed 4kg and had a body length of up to 40cm. It also had a squat body, huge head and wide mouth. Professor Susan Evans, UCL Anatomy & Developmental Biology, said the frog would have been the size of a squashed beach-ball.

Evans said, "This frog, a relative of today's Horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs."

The find is also interesting because it sheds new light on a debate about how the earth's land masses used to be arranged. The frog find gives credence to a theory that Madagascar was once linked to India and South America.

Professor Evans said, "Our discovery of a frog strikingly different from today's Madagascan frogs, and akin to the Horned toads previously considered endemic to South America, lends weight to the controversial paleobiogeographical model suggesting that Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent and South America were linked well into the Late Cretaceous. It also suggests that the initial spread of such beasts began earlier than that proposed by recent estimates."

The BBC and National Geographic also have stories on the ancient frog predator.

Photo source: Stony Brook University

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